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Working and ageing
110 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

especially in regard to empirical studies. However, there was some conceptual
work that called for a change in the way guidance is given in the changing
world of work. Bimrose (2006) brings up the idea that differences between
counselling, guidance and coaching are becoming blurred. Sultana (2003)
points to a needed shift in the provisions of guidance from that of skill-based
improvements to career-based ones. This latter model for guidance would
probably be more appropriate for ageing knowledge workers whose skill-sets
are based more on metacompetences (such as learning to learn) than on
vocational ones. And while this research project deals with ageing workers
currently employed, McNair (Chapter 7 in this volume) emphasises the need
for creating career awareness among these ʻinsidersʼ due to possibilities of
redundancy caused by organisational changes or technological
advancements – both factors can lead to increased stress.

6.2.4. Research possibilities
The section above is about the relationships older employees have with the
organisation in which they work and how stress negatively affects this
relationship. According to literature, this is a two-way relationship (Griffiths,
1997; Hansson et al., 2001).
This section uses this concept as a basis for developing specific research
possibilities to contribute to our understanding of intergenerational learning:
there are strong links between learning, knowledge transfer and retention and
organisational development.
There are five emergent possibilities for research on this theme:
(a) existing policy analysis: there is little or no exploratory research on what
knowledge transfer and retention strategies organisations actually have
developed in regards to an ageing workforce. This is important to begin
developing structured comparisons and methodologies for evaluative
research on the effectiveness of strategies;
(b) evaluating effectiveness of policies: linking knowledge management
initiatives to results – improved innovation, increased organisational
capacity, etc. – is difficult and so is rarely attempted. New methods for
understanding effectiveness of initiatives are needed to show if they are
valuable and accomplished their goal;
(c) new research methodologies for understanding knowledge retention
policies: Stam (2010) did structured comparisons among firms who use
specific interventions to elicit and retain expert knowledge from leaving
employees. In the research, he used a specific methodology for trying to
show understanding of how the interventions worked and the mechanisms